Whether you are a coach, a dentist, a chiropractor or you run a yoga studio, at some point, you have run into the challenge of the time for dollars game. How to overcome that challenge? One of the best ways to make your business and your life more efficient is through creating products for your client base to consume that doesn’t require your time.
Before I get into the different product creation opportunities, let me touch on the concept of the time for dollars trap in case you aren’t familiar with that already. One of the main challenges for service providers who work with people on a one-on-one basis is that their income is tied directly to the time they spend with their clients.
The dilemma then becomes, how do we get paid more once our calendar is full? Ahhhh.
Business owners who are faced with this dilemma may scratch their head for a minute and then come up with one of two simple strategies to make more money once they have maxed out their calendar.
Here they are in no particular order.
Idea #1 They get more efficient. Meaning that they see more people in the same amount of time but figure out ways to leverage their time better.
Idea #2 They work more hours. Ouch! No one wants to do that save for a few very sick individuals. (Please get help.)
There is perhaps a third option that business owners employ which is a hybrid of the above two concepts. This is still not going to cut it.
There is another option for business owners to make money.
It comes from leveraging the most important asset that a business owner has at his/her disposal. That asset is time.
The way you leverage that asset is through the creation of physical or digital products.
Some business owners get a little nervous about the concept of creating their own physical products and services. I have found that the root of their nervousness stems from a lack of knowledge on how to best get these products and services produced.
Here’s the great news.
You are already doing a lot of the things necessary to put products and services together, you just haven’t realized it.
Let me give you an example.
I work with a lot of chiropractors. The chiropractors that I work with typically do a decent job communicating with their patient base.  One of the ways that they engage their patient base and potential patients is through weekly talks that they give on some aspect of health and wellness.
Weekly talks on health and wellness. Sounds good so far right?
Here’s where the wheels start falling off the bus.
Most of my clients never record their talks! Ever! These same doctors also give keynotes in other places as well where there are professional A/V teams there to record the talk and they don’t get the recording.
The lesson for you?
You are already creating content that can be used as a physical product or service, you just aren’t thinking strategically.
Here are the product creation opportunities that you are missing currently in your business:
Speaking- If you work with human beings in a service business, you probably gives talks of some sort. Are you recording these talks? If you were, you could then do a brief edit. You have a lot of reasonably easy to use technology to edit and create video today. Use it.
Your Process- Do you have a process that you take people through to get them the results that they are looking for? If you do, then you have a product. Here’s the funny thing about people. Not all people want to work with a human being to get the results that they are looking for. I am not saying that’s necessarily good or bad but some people just like to go it alone. Part of this is due to trust. They want to know if you deliver the goods before they plunk down $10k for your coaching program. Smart business owners create a do-it-yourself program because they get revenue from the program from work they already did and they get more people engaged with their service.
The Components Of Your Overall Process- Here’s the real beautiful thing about being strategic about your product creation. You can break up the process that you use in your business and sell components of that to potential clients. Start by asking this question. What’s the best part of your process (besides you) that you can use as a gateway product to get people in the door? Why the best? You want to blow people away with what you can do and you have one chance to do that. The idea is to get them to keep doing business with you and to share their results with others. Only your best product will do.
Writing- Have you ever written anything for or about your business? An article for a magazine or a newspaper? Do you blog? All of these vehicles can be used as further products as well. If you blog frequently, can you turn that into a book? You can take a key article that you have written for someone and use that as an introduction to your process.
Those are just four areas that you can look at that are right in front of you. You don’t have to do them all, you can focus on just one area if you would like. Here are some other things that you need to know.
The product doesn’t even have to be something that you charge for but simply makes your work more efficient or gets more people in the door. You can and should use some of your products as free entries into your business for the purpose of upsells.
The other problem that I have seen with clients is once they get the hang of creating products, they create too many. Good problem to have right? The answer is yes and no. In many cases I have worked with clients who were in a state of product overwhelm. Don’t create too many products too soon. You won’t leverage them properly nor give them the chance to be successful.
There are a lot of great opportunities for you to create value in the marketplace for current and future clients as well as increase the revenue of your business without you spending a lot of extra time to do it. It’s time to leverage your time effectively and make a lot more money and spend a lot more time with your families in the process.